Bay Area Equity, Inclusion & Urban Planning

Alicia John-Baptiste is the president and CEO of SPUR. She is responsible for defining the overall vision and strategy for the organization. Alicia served for three years as SPUR's deputy director, overseeing policy and strategic initiatives and running the organization day to day. Prior to joining SPUR, she held senior public administration and public policy roles for the City and County of San Francisco, including chief of staff positions at both the San Francisco Planning Department and the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency. She holds a Masters degree in public policy from the Harvard Kennedy School and a Bachelor of Arts from Duke University.

Louise Mozingo is Professor of the Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning. She is a member of the Graduate Group in Urban Design of the College of Environmental Design and Director of the American Studies program of the College of Letters and Sciences at the University of California, Berkeley. She was named a Richard and Rhoda Goldman Distinguished Professor of Undergraduate and Interdisciplinary Studies in 2017. A former Associate and senior landscape architect for Sasaki Associates, Prof. Mozingo joined the department after a decade of professional practice. In 2009 she became the founding director of a research interdisciplinary team at the College of Environmental Design, the Center for Resource Efficient Communities (CREC) dedicated to supporting resource efficiency goals through environmental planning and urban design. www.crec.berkeley.edu Professor Mozingo’s articles and reviews have appeared in the New York Times, Places, Landscape Journal, Journal of the History of Gardens and Designed Landscapes, Landscape Architecture Magazine, Geographical Review, and the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians. She has contributed chapters to Everyday America: Cultural Landscape Studies after J.B. Jackson (2003) edited by Chris Wilson and Paul Groth, Healing Natures edited by Robert France (2008), and Worlds Away: New Suburban Landscapes (2008) edited by Andrew Blauvelt. Mozingo’s book, Pastoral Capitalism: A History of Suburban Corporate Landscapes (MIT Press), won 2011 American Publishers Award for Professional and Scholarly Excellence (PROSE Award) in the Architecture and Urban Planning category, the 2014 Elisabeth Blair MacDougall Prize from the Society of Architectural Historians for the best book in landscape history, and an American Society of Landscape Architects Honor Award for Communications in 2014. Prof. Mozingo has been the recipient of Harvard University's Dumbarton Oaks Fellowship for Studies in Landscape Architecture, the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture Award of Recognition for Excellence in Teaching, Writing, and Service, and the University of California, Berkeley Chancellor's Award of Recognition for University and Community Partnerships. She has lectured widely, including Harvard University, University of British Columbia, University of Oregon, Yale University, Stanford University, MIT, and the National Building Museum, Washington, D.C.

With a career in urban planning that spans 30 years, Rosalynn Hughey has a passion for city building, placemaking and civic engagement. She serves as the Director of the Department of Planning, Building and Code Enforcement for the City of San José, and provides leadership for the City’s broad range of planning and development services, including stewardship of the Envision San Jose 2040 General Plan. Rosalynn also leads Citywide initiatives, such as Climate Smart San José, Diridon Station Area Implementation/BART Phase II, and Public Life Strategy. Prior to joining the City of San José, Rosalynn served as Deputy Director in the Washington, D.C. Office of Planning, where she led dozens of neighborhood and transit-oriented development plans and large-scale planning/redevelopment projects. Rosalynn is a Senior Fellow of the American Leadership Forum Silicon Valley. She is a member of the American Planning Association, including the Big City Planning Directors’ Institute. Rosalynn is also an active member of the Urban Land Institute, serving on the Executive Board of the San Francisco District Council and selected as a 2017 Fellow of the Rose Center for Public Leadership in Land Use.

Georgia Sarkin is an architect and urban planner. She is a Principal and lead urban designer and planner at SmithGroup where she leads projects at the intersection of architecture and planning. She applies interdisciplinary thinking to her work to re-imagine connectivity, mobility, identity and equity in our cities. Georgia has steered public and private sector urban development projects around the globe including San Francisco, New York, Milan, Scottsdale, Richmond, Manila, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Johannesburg & KwaZulu Natal. Her work includes civic, mixed use, higher education, public infrastructure and open spaces systems. Most recently she has led a community engagement process to reimagine the Federal Plaza in the heart of San Francisco and a Civic Center Master Plan for the City of Santa Clara in Silicon Valley. Georgia has taught at Harvard Graduate School of Design as Design Critic in Urban Design & Columbia University, New York, as Associate Professor in Urban Planning. She received her Master of Architecture and Urban Design from Harvard University. Her planning and built work have received numerous design awards.

Samantha S. Low, LEED AP (BD+C) is a tenant real estate advisor at Cushman & Wakefield and a co-founder of TenantSee (www.tenantsee.co), a technology that empowers tenants with knowledge on what goes on behind the CRE transaction curtain, which provides transparency and efficiency from site selections to moving into a new space. TenantSee won an award at the CRE Tech Conference in December 2018. She is the 2020 CREW SF President, whose mission is to develop and advance women as leaders in the CRE industry. She was recognized by Bisnow as one of the Bay Area Power Women in 2019 and the 2019 CREW SF MVP in the Elevate hosted by The Registry. She is also the Industry Outreach chair of the Cushman & Wakefield WIN (Women Integrated Network) SF Chapter, the West Region co-chair of C&W ASPIRE (Asian and Pacific Islanders Professionals in Real Estate), and a prominent diversity & inclusion advocator. She lives in SF with her husband and three daughters. When not tirelessly supporting her family and purposes, she can easily spend an entire day at the museum or watch Game of Thornes.